BOOK THE THIRD: A LONG LANE

Chapter 8: The End of a Long Journey

The train of carts and horses came and went all day from dawn to
nightfall, making little or no daily impression on the heap of ashes,
though, as the days passed on, the heap was seen to be slowly
melting. My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when
you in the course of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have
piled up a mountain of pretentious failure, you must off with your
honourable coats for the removal of it, and fall to the work with the
power of all the queen's horses and all the queen's men, or it will
come rushing down and bury us alive.

Yes, verily, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards,
adapting your Catechism to the occasion, and by God's help so you
must. For when we have got things to the pass that with an
enormous treasure at disposal to relieve the poor, the best of the
poor detest our mercies, hide their heads from us, and shame us by
starving to death in the midst of us, it is a pass impossible of
prosperity, impossible of continuance. It may not be so wrirten in
the Gospel according to Podsnappery; you may not 'find these
words' for the text of a sermon, in the Returns of the Board of
Trade; but they have been the truth since the foundations of the
universe were laid, and they will be the truth until the foundations
of the universe are shaken by the Builder. This boastful handiwork
of ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional pauper, the
sturdy breaker of windows and the rampant tearer of clothes,
strikes with a cruel and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and
is a horror to the deserving and unfortunate. We must mend it,
lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, or in its own evil hour
it will mar every one of us.

Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly
honest creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along
the roads of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly
to die, untouched by workhouse hands--this was her highest
sublunary hope.

Nothing had been heard of her at Mr Boffin's house since she
trudged off. The weather had been hard and the roads had been
bad, and her spirit was up. A less stanch spirit might have been
subdued by such adverse influences; but the loan for her little outfit
was in no part repaid, and it had gone worse with her than she had
foreseen, and she was put upon proving her case and maintaining
her independence.